Optical nanoantennas and their applications

In this talk, we review the design and applications of optical antennas. After an overview on the use and technology of nanoantennas, we will discuss the concepts of loading, impedance matching, tuning and sensitivity of various nanoantenna geometries using the nanocircuit concepts. We analyze various nanoantenna devices with theory and full-wave numerical simulations, and apply our findings to optimize printed plasmonic nanoantenna designs to explore their use in biosensing applications. We show that the equivalent nanocircuit model of optical antennas can be an efficient tool to design and tailor to a large degree their response. The presented numerical simulations verify the accuracy of this model, providing excellent agreement with nanocircuit theory.